Wind turbine class identification for a 30 MW wind farm in Santa Vitoria do Palmar, Brazil

Abstract

The present study discussed the wind resource assessment of a 30MW wind farm in Santa Vitoria do Palmar, Brazil. The wind regime at the site was evaluated by determining the Weibull parameters, annual mean wind speed, turbulence intensity and predicted annual energy yield. The Weibull parameters were calculated using different statistical estimation methods to predict the probability density function and cumulative distribution function of wind regime. The analytical results were compared with the numerical output obtained from commercial software such as WAsP. WAsP and Windfarmer were also used to perform numerical calculation that generates an observed wind climate report and to predict the annual net energy production at the site. Calculation results revealed that the site is suitable for Germanischer Lloyd (GL) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Class II wind turbine generator with characteristic turbulence intensity at reference height according to GL and IEC Subclass B. It was also found that the estimated annual energy production of wind farm based on the proposed turbine arrangement is ranging from 96.2 GWh to 98 GWh using WAsP and Windfarmer softwares, respectively.